scribble dot circle line
by Moon in Pisces
Summary: [Based on Humpty Dumpty] Pala Edvardsdottir, an immigrant from Iceland, lives in New York with her husband slash humanized egg slash experiment gone wrong: Humpty Dumpty. warning—langugage.
1. scribble

**scribble**

**-**

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**-**

**I will let you down. **

He sits alone in the dark. His rounded body is drowned in distorted velvet fabrics as deep and rich as blood—my blanket. He holds a gray diet coke can in one hand and pretty much sits like a Homer Simpson, with tired, half-lidded eyes gazing at a bright screen. I'm standing by the entrance door watching him. He's so lucky he has someone like me caring for him—worrying about him. He's so lucky.

"Fuck this…"

His voice is rigid, graveled with monotonousness—too sturdy to belong to someone so fragile like himself. _My enemy, my lover: Humpty Dumpty._

I slither on the walls until I am only centimeters away from the arm of the couch. He still doesn't notice me and I feel a storm of unfailing tears. I reach for his hard-shelled head and stroke it gently. He doesn't feel it. He doesn't feel anything anymore.

I gaze into those large, dark brown eyes—large dark eyes of _my enemy, my lover._

Then I grab the remote that sits in-between his skinny thighs and switch the television off. I switch the world off to a hush.

_This is the way I love you. This is the way I hate you._

He looks up at me, quirking his eyebrows. "What the fuck! That was Jay Leno you switched off!"

_I said I feel a storm of unfailing tears. And I'm not sure they're on my side, but you always know where they go after they've dried on my scars._

"…" There's nothing more I can say. All I can say has been buried in what I did—like a needle lost in a sea of hay.

_And maybe I don't feel anything. Maybe I just made this all up. Maybe I'm too selfless._

And then I do it, I stand there and he watches my face wrinkle like a raisin and redden as the storm reigned—_My storm of unfailing tears._

"Pála. Pála, stop crying."

I bite my lip. He's getting frustrated.

"Why the fuck are you crying!"

I take a deep breath and try to throw away the sobs, but my heart is disturbed with poison—_my love is like this for you, my love is dangerous, my love is wrong._

"_Stop, just stop_—" My words are forced and gobbled by my sobs.

"Stop what! You stop crying, bitch!"

A sharp gasp and another gobbled syllable._ "Stop doing this—"_

_I love you, but do you love me? _

_And my love is like this._

_**scribble**_


	2. dot

**dot**

**-**

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**Again and again and again.**

I slam my bedroom door shut then I lock it behind me. I just try to float anywhere and I just—I just drop on the floor and it's wet on the floor—it's fucking wet on the floor—

Everything hurts—it's like a highlighted hurting—and I think I'm coughing blood but it's only colorless poison—_the poison that disturbs my heart, my love. _

I'm naked on the floor, with my towel falling off of me every time and every time I pull it back on but it falls, _even my life_.

He knocks on the door calling _"Baby! Baby!"_

I'm crying so fucking hard that I start coughing the cries out. Every cough makes the pain fucking worse—every cough.

"Baby, _((I'm sorry. That wasn't me))_."

My face wrinkles so tightly as the message rings in my ears:

_He hurts me because he fucking loves me. It's love. It's fucking love._

I'm quiet now—thinking with my eyes darting in all possible directions.

**dot**


	3. circle

**circle**

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**I go through all this **

_Click! Beep. Beep. Beep. _Track 5.

I'm on the subway, standing by and holding onto a pole in the middle of a cloudy haze of people with my CD player hooked to the rim of my jeans. It's so stuffy and humid in here—the air is uncomfortable. The train is about to go and the cold New York air feels around me from the numerous open doors. It's late. Anya could be sleeping by now.

She's at my sister Fjóla's apartment and is staying there for a while and then will go back to Iceland. I don't really want to see her, but it's been three years now and I am her daughter.

Now the train doors slide shut and the train begins to move. My headphones tightly cover my ears and for the rest of the ride, I'll be engulfed by Björk's musical genius: A cast of brooding orchestral strings and a _chugga-chugga/chugga-chugga/ch_ train beat, highlighted by her sovereign vocals. I stare blankly at all the alien faces surrounding me: ordinary people.

_I'm part of something unholy—I'm part of something amazing…_

Anya doesn't even know about Humpy Dumpty. I don't even want to know what she would do if she knew. She wouldn't understand. It's not just science. It's love. I'm not just selling my soul to an experiment. It's fucking love.

And it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself.

I turn my music up a little. I'm thinking again—too much.

_and my love is like this:_

**circle**


	4. line

**line**

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**cry it off and then—**

I come at 11, close to 12 at night, and they have been waiting for me to eat dinner with them.

We are having harðfiskur for dinner, which is dried, hard catfish. We're also having fiskisupa, or fish soup, with some flat bread.

Anya asks me a lot of questions. I answer her with half-truths. I tell her I'm going to university and that I work with scientists for internship. And then she nods and her eyes become distant. She says, "Remember what your Apa, what he told you. He told you God comes first."

We sit at the dining table in Fjóla's apartment, underneath a single light bulb hanging by a chain up in the ceiling. Anya sits opposing to me in her feeble state of wrinkles, thin gray hair and liver spots. Her thin, native Icelandic eyes eye me like those of a stalking bird.

She says, "Did you hear what I say?"

"Ye-es," I barely utter, "I remember."

_I remember?_

I look away, maybe with shame. But every time I'm with Anya, I feel like a lie. I can never be her Pála. And I cannot be the Pála I want to be. She is like a dead end for me—a dead end.

Fjóla approaches us at the table from deep within the kitchen. She stretches her arms across the table from the farther end to place three glasses next to our plates. Then she walks around the table to take her seat beside Anya.

It's so quiet in the room. I sit with my arms folded and with my back slumped.

Someday, my Anya will know. I think about that day too much.

Fjóla's fiskisupá is strong—amazing—and lingers on my tongue for the whole course. Fjóla herself is strong—amazing. She sits there cutting up her flat bread into pieces with her dainty, pale fingers that never seem to get dirty. She is so clean. She is so pure. There is pleasant air around her face, framed by her angel golden hair. And her lips almost never hang open. They are always sealed tight.

And that is why I told her already.

"Fjóla, do you remember God?" Anya says, interrupting the rhythms of our eating silence.

I make myself busy by picking through fish bones.

Fjóla turns to Anya and says in her melodic voice, "Everyday, I remember God."

Then, Anya looks to me. She gives me that look. I just keep my head bowed. All this pressure comes to my head. It's like I'm sinking to the fucking bottom of the ocean. I'm sinking.

"It is good to remember God. Apa will be okay as long as we do," Anya says while bowing her head as if she is praying to God, "But look at yourselves. You give me lies. I have been staying here for only a couple of days, Fjóla, and I have not seen you reading The Bible. You only read those cursed college books of yours. And you, Pála, you working with the scientists as internship." Here, she pauses and shakes her head. She huffs.

It's hard for me to swallow this piece of fish in my mouth.

Anya covers her eyes and shakes her head. She moans and whines. Fjóla looks taken aback, but she pats Anya's back anyway. She's her daughter too. I know.

And I think about the day Anya will know everyday. That day is real. That's what I remember everyday.

**line**


	5. scribbles

**scribble**

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**I will let you down.**

Raindrops sliding—stretching—down the windowpane. I watch from outside the window, under a large, black umbrella. Inside, the light from the T.V. splashes and shifts on Humpty's figure as he slouches back on the couch. His eyes are glued on the T.V screen.

Through the syringes of the freezing rain, I place my hand on the dripping windowpane. It's numbing. My hand is numb.

_Fade out. Again. Fade out. Again._

I don't try to move my hand. What's the point of moving something numb? What's the point, when I know that all it needs is something to warm it?

It's like those summers where I spend every day wishing I had someone. I still do it. I know things aren't forever. I know that.

_We're sitting on the couch together. _

_I don't know how it is. It just is. _

_He rubs my cheek and I smile. He tells me how much he loves my eyes. He tells me so much and locks it in a kiss._

_I'm wrapped all over him. _

_It just is. _

Summer nights full of orange nostalgia. I am nostalgia. I am nostalgia when my fingers slide off the wet windowpane.

I've become so many things. _Becoming…_

I can't move.

He doesn't need me.

"Pála?"

I turn to my left at Dr. King. His tight, gloved hand holds the large, black umbrella above us. All I notice first is his broad moustache. And then my eyes lean toward the window again, catching Humpty dialing the same button over and over again on his remote.

"What is it that you wanted to speak about before?" Dr. King says. He has stone-cold eyes and odd creases on his face. He's Norse.

I look up at him. The rain pours on the umbrella so fast. I can't feel myself as much anymore. My lips are sealed so tight. And I get scared sometimes of the way Dr. King looks at people; the way he looks at me.

"What did you do to me, exactly?" I ask him quietly.

His eyebrows harden.

"I don't understand…how I feel," _and I can't even describe it. _"Well I—I understand that we must love each other but what if—but—he doesn't love me."

It's not the rain. It's my tears that start to well.

"He doesn't love me. And then what? What's going to happen to me? I'll still be in love with him—"

Dr. King rests his free gloved hand on my shoulder, so close to the bend of my neck. He says, "I can't guarantee anything to you. The doses of euphoria that we injected in you, only act as a stimulant for your brain. But as any stimulant, it will run out soon. So if this experiment does fail…you won't have to carry the burden—unless…"

He caresses my cheek and wipes my tears, and the fabric of his gloves burns my skin. "Unless what?" I ask.

He says, "Well—technically your love isn't real. It's just the Euphoria. But if you grow more in love without the Euphoria, then—then nature will have its way with you…but that's only IF."

I bow my head, with my eyes peeking at the window. Like I had missed something important happening to him.

"I know. I know…" My voice trails off. _And I think it might already be too late._

I'm staring out the window and then my head jerks. My head jerks, like I have a seizure. And my eyes suddenly feel drier. They widen and I blink, but my eyelids are dry too. My hand is on the windowpane. It's so numb, I can't even remember when I put it there.

"Pála?"

I turn to my left at Dr. King. "What is it that you wanted to speak about before?" He says.

_What is it that you wanted to speak about before?_

I just look at him. I can't feel myself under his gaze and then his hand reaches for my shoulder. It moves so slow that it contrasts with the pouring rain around us. Humpty glows behind the blurred window and his movements blur with the sliding rain.

_Nostalgia. Humpty. Love. My heart._

"What did you do to me, exactly? I don't understand…how I feel," and my lips run on a motor. I've been thinking about these things too much—Thinking about asking him this too much that it seems like I've told him already. I'm crazy.

"Well I—I understand that we must love each other but what if—but—he doesn't love me. He doesn't love me. And then what? What's going to happen to me? I'll still be in love with him—"

His gloved hand tightens on my shoulder blade. He says, "I can't guarantee anything to you. There are just some things that you can't know and that you just can't control."

My eyes threaten to water. Now my lips won't open and my tongue struggles to deliver my words. I tell him, "I know, I know. I can't control everything. But you're the one who created him—you can fix him."

His hand slides down, off my face and then he tilts his head, studying me. "We can't afford anymore mistakes. Humpty Dumpty is a humanoid. He's human. Goodnight," He tells me off and then he hands me the handle of the umbrella.

I can't believe him. What the fuck? God. What the fuck? I just cry an almost cry. And he towers over me, so I take the handle. I ask him, "What are you saying?"

But he gives me that look and says, "Good night."

His tall form turns around and disappears into the night, mixed with heavy streetlights and thickset bushes. The rain pours on him.

Dr. King…

_Walls of metal and silicon technology shrouded in a net of dimness surround me in a barricade. Countless screens blast and diffuse onto multiple white-coat men that advance like a fast-forwarding tape. They flip their notepads. Scribble. And one white-coated man stands out. He digs his index finger in his cheek, while cupping his chin. All the way, outweighing me with his gaze. _

"_She's the one."_

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A/N: If you've read through this chapter and had no idea what was happening, I'll explain some stuff. Because, I didn't think it would have come out clear either. Dr. King, who created Humpty, accidentally told Pála some information that she wasn't supposed to know about…so she erased her memory and rewind time. I'll explain how he could have done this later…if you read and review. Thanks. If you think this story's weird, all you have to do is review. Just review. Tell me I'm sick, whatever. I want opinions, please. Thanks, again.


	6. dots

**dot**

* * *

**Again and again and again.**

And the rain takes over.

I am standing there silently, with a roaring downpour surrounding me. The endless rain is a murky haze around me through the night air.

I am standing there, at my front door, feeling like a total stranger about to enter my own house.

Where once upon a time there lived a Humpty Dumpty. _My enemy, my lover: Humpty Dumpty._

This is our home. I accepted that a long time ago.

I begin to scramble for my keys in my pockets, just then the front door creaks open. A wash of stale florescent light from within the house invites me in, and it also frames a pensive face staring back at me.

"I saw you out at the window," Humpty tells me, nonchalant in his manner.

"…" I cannot speak. I cannot even believe he opened the door.

"Come in. It's raining."

I take a couple careful steps inside, and our eyes are locked on each other as I shift. I watch him slam the door shut beside me. I look down at him. Those large brown eyes of his pierce me.

_You are not allowed to look at me that way,  
like you might still be in love with me._

I wonder does he see me?

After this long pause we share, Humpty retreats. He goes back to his place on the couch, where the shrill voices from the TV beckon him.

My eyes never leave him. They register him handling the remote.

God, he will never see me.

"Do you even love me?" It just comes out. Out loud.

He freezes. His hand hangs in the air, still holding the remote. The house freezes in silence but the downpour outside rains, unfailing in a murmur.

My heart starts racing wildly.

Slowly, he faces me with that pensive face again. His large brown eyes piercing me again.

I just have to go on, I say, "I love you so much. I cannot—_take this_." My voice cracks into a whimper at the end.

He sighs. He gets up and points the remote at me warily, he says, "Well then fuck you, Pála!"

It's my turn to sigh, with grief. I shout out, "I just _LOVE _YOU!" I start shaking my head as the tears start to rush. "It really hurts…"

He gets up and walks toward me. By now I'm sobbing my heart out. Once he approaches me, he pushes me back against the front door, and then he proceeds to lightly slide his fingers down from my cheek to my neck. His eyes threaten me, but are blurred through the frosty glass of my tears.

"I hurt you?" He asks, hysterical.

"mh…" I barely make a reply. My heart is beating so hard I could die from it.

Instantly, he grabs my neck tightly with his two hands. I yelp frantically, my hands flapping and slapping against the door behind me while struggling to get out of his grasp. I'm gasping for air. I'm just going to die! I'm just going to die—

Blaring in my ears is the combined sound of his violent silence as he watches me suffer, my short shrieks as I gasp for air, and the murmuring rain as it drones outside.

It never stops.

**dot**

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	7. circles

**circle**

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**I go through all this.**

"Pála?"

The world pulls me back in with that faint speaking voice. I open my eyes to find my Anya in front of me. She is a halo hovering over me. She asks me softly, "Pála, are you awake? Sweetheart?"

At this point my eyes are wide open, surveying my Anya's face. I notice that a dark redness of worry and of sleeplessness outlines her deep-set eyes.

"Pála!" She gasps, paralyzed with excitement. The skin underneath her eyes soon begins to gather as her face scrunches for a cry. She instantly topples herself on me, turning it into a huge embrace. We are both lying on a thin bed. Her sobs fill my ears, and my entire existence.

Then, a great wave of pain strikes throughout my body. A sharp cry seeps from my lips.

Anya heaves herself off of me. While standing, she gently strokes my arm, shushing me through swallowing her own tears. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry…" She cranes her head up in the air, praying to God. She prays loudly in Icelandic, for both me and for her god to hear.

I interrupt her, "Anya…what—?"

"—Shh! Sweetheart, take it easy. You're in the hospital now. Everything is okay."

I let out another sharp cry to the pain. Anya stops her stroking and lightly holds her hand's place on my arm. Through all the pain I feel, I can still strangely register her comforting touch.

"Everything is okay. The only thing that matters is that they found you alive and now that you are well, you can concentrate on getting better, my sweetheart!"

Once again, I'm rendered speechless. I can only flop my head onto its other side, on my pillow, where I am able to bore my eyes into the nothingness and whiteness of the room walls.

In my mind, that horrible rainy night is stark clear.

It happened.

And for some reason, I made it out alive. And I wouldn't be lying here right now with my Anya, if that were not true.

She loves me so much.

I can hear her sniffing her sobs now, eating her sobs now away from behind my head.

And she loves God.

That doesn't change the truth. Behind her back, I married Humpty Dumpty. Itself a deliberate act of perversion no moral human being would have ever done. Then, right after meeting with Dr. King, the man behind the entire experiment, to complain about Humpty that night, Humpty tried to kill me. Now, look, I find myself in a hospital, not knowing where to go from that truth.

I don't even know what happened to Humpty that night.

What happened to me?

No. I know what happened to me. I believed in love.

After speaking with Dr. King, it should have been clear to me that I was on my own with the experiment now. The research team had given up on him, but I could not give up on him.

I still went to the front door that night.

I did it to myself.

With all the pain building up inside of me, my tears begin to well up at my eyes. The feelings are still there. The feelings I have for him are real. How sad, how disgusting: I will never be able to deny them for as long as I live…

_I will never be free of you_  
_I will always love you_  
_We will always be_

**circle**

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_

**circle**


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